


i could have danced on the sun

by theredhoodie



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, pre-series AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 03:59:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18731179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredhoodie/pseuds/theredhoodie
Summary: Sweeney ends up spotting a family. Seemingly normal. There’s a husband and wife and kids. Young. One of them is all bones and has a reddish hue to her thin hair.He watches her curiously, as only an immortal can watch a mortal.The tip of balance is off. She’s no Essie, she has no faith in him, for him, but her spirit is true.He can feel it.





	i could have danced on the sun

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, this idea came from LydiaWrenWolfram here on AO3, wanting a sort of AU pre-series thing where Sweeney sort of follows Laura throughout her life because she reminds him of Essie.
> 
> I intended this to be VERY DIFFERENT from this finished product, but this little thing plucks at my heartstrings anyway so here we have it.
> 
> I call this, Alternate Canon, as I tied everything up and let the rest of canon speak for itself after all this business happens.
> 
> Also shoutout to Flogging Molly's "Laura" for being the best/worst Madwife song ever and for giving me this line for the title.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy it!

When you get to be as old as someone like Mad Sweeney, you see the same eyes, feel the same spirit, in people through the centuries. It's part of the human condition, or whatever it is people call it these days.

His life leads him places without him really knowing it. Sometimes, he's by Grimnir's side, prowling the countryside, pushing chess pieces into place for some grand scheme, but sometimes he's left to his own devices.

He is his own man, even if he's Grimnir's right hand.

He's traveling and ends up in Indiana. He's been in Indiana before, just not this particular town. It's like every other American town. He's forgotten in it just like in all the others.

Sweeney ends up spotting a family. Seemingly normal. There's a husband and wife and kids. Young. One of them is all bones and has a reddish hue to her thin hair.

He watches her curiously, as only an immortal can watch a mortal.

The tip of balance is off. She's no Essie, she has no faith in him, for him, but her spirit is true.

He can feel it.

 

 

 

 

She grows up. He passes through. She never sees him.

He's basically turned into a stalker but he doesn't know how to stop. He's compelled here. He comes whenever he isn't needed by Grimnir.

Her name is Laura, he learns. Laura McCabe. There may be a hint of Irish in her, but she's as American as they become.

She's bratty and selfish too. More than once, Sweeney toys with teaching her drunk of a dad a lesson but it seems too hypocritical so he stays back.

He steps into her line of sight, once or twice, does his best to keep creeps away as she gets older.

Her spirit is something familiar and he just can't fucking help himself. He goes where she goes. She changes between the years he sees her.

Soon she's gotten foulmouthed with her parents and he finds himself liking her more and more. She inches her way toward adulthood and he finds himself enthralled, unable to shake her.

 

 

 

 

It's dark and late and just a little chilly. Laura crosses her arms and scurries across the damp swaths of pavement, oddly void of student life. It  _is_  a Friday night, and it's easy to hear parties going on in dorm buildings if you listened hard enough.

Her hair flows behind her in curls, frizzy after a whole day of classes and hiking her ass across campus. Her eyes are tilted to the ground so she doesn't trip.

There's a distinct click and flick sound of a Zippo lighting up nearby. She glances up to find the source of the sound.

The person sitting there near an overhead light, perched on a brick wall blocking off a dying garden, is too old to be a student, too disheveled to be a professor. In any case, he does not look like he should be on a college campus.

Laura digs around in her coat pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes as her feet pull her in his general direction. If her sister were here, she'd say Laura was bound to end up dead in a gutter somewhere from her lack of common sense and bad judgement calls.

She places the cigarette between her lips just as the man flicks something into the air. A coin of some kind. She doesn't see or hear it land. He flicks up another. And another.

With a frown creasing her brow, Laura holds the cancer stick between her fingers and lets it hang at her side. "How did you do that?" she asks, stopping a few feet away.

A ring of fire lights up in the night as he inhales. "Just a little magic," he says. He's got some kind of accent, but says too few words for her to make it out.

She steps closer, eyes adjusting to the dim light. His hair is a dingy orange in the night. "Yeah, sure," she says, holding out her cigarette. "Can I get a light?"

He obliges and she leans in to the flame.

Up close, she can see his eyes pretty clearly. He doesn't strike her as a serial killer so she doesn't immediately walk away. "I'm Laura," she says after a beat, tucking one hand under an elbow and blowing smoke into the air.

He nods, putting his lighter back into his jacket. "You want to go get a drink?"

She raises her eyebrows. "I'm nineteen."

"I know."

A red flag that should probably catch her attention, but she ignores it. "I could use a drink," she says. He stands and she realizes he's a whole lot taller than he original appeared to be. She has to tilt her head back to see his face. "I'll go with you  _if_  you tell me how you did that coin trick."

He thinks about it for a minute before he shrugs a shoulder. A moment later, three coins fall out of nowhere, clattering on the concrete. Wordlessly, Laura crouches and reaches for them. She lifts them in her hands. They appear to be gold. Like, real gold. She turns them over in her hands. "How the fuck did you do that?" she says, twisting around.

He puts his hands in his pockets and takes a few steps backwards. "I told you. Magic." He spins around and walks off.

A few heartbeats later, she follows, jogging to catch up. It takes two or three steps for her to keep up next to each of his strides. "Who are you?" she asks, pocketing the gold. Her hands are empty, her cigarette turning to ash on the ground under the light.

"I'm a leprechaun."

She snorts. "Yeah right."

He says nothing.

"You're serious."

"I don't really care if you think I'm serious or not."

Laura frowns and clutches her hands around the gold coins in her pocket. "Okay. I mean, you have the accent. It makes sense." She doesn't believe him, but she wants to see where this goes. She probably should care more about walking into the night with a stranger, but she can't fucking help herself.

He doesn't think for a second that she believes him and he doesn't rightly care.

The campus bleeds into its adjacent town, and soon the streets are full and music pours out of open doors to bars. They skip the sports bar and proceed to one that's on the second floor, above a restaurant. Or maybe they're connected. Laura hadn't been inside before. That would be  _illegal_.

She follows him up metal stairs to the balcony and pass a line of people waiting. Either they somehow don't see the two of them cutting in line, or they're waiting for them to be out of earshot before they complain. Laura has no idea how he thinks he's gonna sneak her inside, but he doesn't sneak.

He just walks passed the guy checking IDs, who doesn't stop him, nor her.

"What the hell," she mutters, following him to the bar. Off to one side is the world's biggest coatrack, taking up a whole corner. In just a few minutes, Laura's lost her coat and has a drink put into her hand.

"What is this?" she has to yell. She also notices, annoyingly enough, that she can barely see over the back of the stools sitting around the bartop. If she'd known she'd be going out, she would have put on some heels so she didn't feel so tiny.

"It's a drink," he replies before weaving his way through a steady crowd of college kids and undercover professors to a high table. He has a drink of his own and sips at it as she looks questioning at her drink. "You never have a drink before?"

She scowls at his tone and takes a gulp. Grimaces a little as it burns her throat but she tosses her hair over her shoulder and looks around the room. Two pool tables are sitting nearby, crowded around with mostly douchey looking white college guys.

"If you're a leprechaun," she says, a plan forming in her head, "does that mean you can give me some good luck? Or take someone's luck away?"

"Uh...not exactly."

She frowns. "So if I wanted to make sure to ream those guys' asses at pool, could you make sure that happens?"

He blinks at her and then looks toward the tables and back again. "If you give me an offering," he says with a sigh.

"An offering? What like...a prayer or something?"

"No."

"Then what?" She thinks, thinks about how he isn't a leprechaun and what exactly would a guy want from her? "I'll give you a kiss. If I win. Does that work?"

It doesn't work like that, but he's a son of a bitch so he says, "Yeah sure. And you'll owe me a favor."

She waves a hand and downs the rest of her drink. Regrets it, coughs a little and hops off the seat. He still towers over her seated. She holds out a hand in his direction. "I need money." Her wallet was back in her dorm room. All she had were some gold coins from his own hand, and she didn't think the pool mechanism would take them.

He grumbles but fishes around in his jacket until he finds four quarters, slapping them into her awaiting palm.

She gives him a brief, brilliant smile and then walks over to the pool tables. He watches her from afar as she puts her stack of quarters down and chats with the guys playing. They puff up at the sight of her, a pretty girl, offering to kick their asses. They don't take her seriously.

He has magic when he remembers he has it. He's no performing monkey, but Laura is already pretty proficient at pool so he does little to boost her luck. She wipes the floor pretty cleanly with the douchebags, leaving them cursing her out and calling her a cheat. She swipes the twenty-three dollars they'd been playing for and walks back to the table.

"Here," she says, putting a five on the table and pushing it toward him. "For the drink."

"Nicely done," he tells her, grabbing the money and shoving it into his pocket.

True to her word and ready to have one helluva story to tell her roommate when she gets back, Laura grabs the front of his shirt and pushes herself to her toes and kisses him, square on the mouth. She was gonna just kiss his cheek and get out of this scott free, but changed her mind in the last moment.

She kisses him and ignores the jolt that seems to run through her and pushes him back into his seat a little roughly. Clears her throat and climbs into her seat. She pushes hair behind her ears and pockets the rest of the money into her jeans.

"So," she says, holding onto her empty glass and facing him. "Do you have a name?"

He thinks about it, finishes his drink and sets it down. "You can call me Sweeney."

"What kind of name is that?" She arches an eyebrow. He goes to open his mouth to reply but she puts up a hand. "Right, right. Leprechaun."

He inclines his head. A few minutes later, he retreats, claiming to need to take a leak and never comes back. She leaves, after a while, finding her coat buried beneath three others and walks herself home.

 

 

 

 

She's gonna have to drive back for graduation, but that's in a week. Her classes are done, her apartment lease is up.

Her aunt, one of the only family members who seemed to  _get_  Laura, passed away in the winter but left her house to Laura.

Laura took it. It is filled with boxes now, and she's hot and sweaty and her parents just left after helping her lug in all those boxes.

After a good long sit at the kitchen table and a glass of water, she starts going through her shit.

She starts with clothes because it's easy. She pulls out shirts and pants and more leggings than she can count. She goes through three boxes and reaches for a fourth. She stabs through the tape and finds her once-favorite canvas jacket sitting on top.

She wore it pretty much every day in the fall on campus, and even over multiple layers in the winter.

It holds a certain amount of nostalgia for her. She shakes it out and hears a soft clink from one of the pockets.

Digging in, she pulls out some coins. At first she thinks their quarters, then euros, and finally she looks closer and realizes that they're none of those things. They're heavy enough to be real gold and there are three of them.

She holds them in her palm and reaches back into her memory, trying to reach for something that was hiding back there like wisps of steam in the air.

Eventually giving up, Laura hangs up the coat next to the door and eventually drops the coins in the top drawer of her dresser, where they'll stay forever.

 

 

 

 

Sweeney has had a hell of a few years. Grimnir's really riding his ass.

But he does what he needs and follows through and then he disappears for a while. He finds Laura again, though she's moved. Her house is nice, but he watches with a cigarette in his hand from afar, not venturing any farther.

He follows her to work. A casino, of all places. He loses himself easily in the crowd. Tests his luck. Never plucks up the strength to go sit at her table.

She looks happy there, content to count cards and enjoying herself doing it.

Sweeney watches her drive home with a stranger and drinks himself to sleep at a local bar.

 

 

 

 

Laura opens the door, grumbling about the fact that she was coming to the door amid constant knocks, and finds herself stunned into a stuttered silence.

"Hello there, love," Sweeney says, cracking a grin though he looks like goddamn hell. Black eye, cuts of numerous sizes on his cheeks and forehead. "I'm cashing in that favor you owe me."

She remembers, vaguely, agreeing to such a thing four years ago. "Shit," she says, gripping the edge of the door until her knuckles go red and then white. "You're real."

He tilts his head to the side, not expecting that. "Yes. I'm real."

"Huh." She shifts her weight to one leg, leaning against the door, blocking him from walking in. She thought about that night for while after it happened, but then it tucked itself away like a good dream. "Are you still a leprechaun?"

"Most days," he says, lifting his hand and plucking some gold from the air. "You gonna let me the fuck in, or what?"

"Are you gonna murder me?" she asks, still not moving.

"Wasn't planning on it." He swallows hard, ignoring the pain in his face, and nods to the darkened house behind her. "You got a boyfriend in there?"

"Why? You wanna sleep with me?" She doesn't budge, but raises her chin in defiance.

Sweeney licks his parched lips and looks down at her in mild disbelief. "Just let me in, yeah?"

She thinks about it. Feels the waves of hot air escaping the house into the cold winter air and finally steps aside. He blunders his way in, rubbing his hands together and cursing the cold. She locks the door behind her and flicks on the overhead light in the living room. "I do have a boyfriend, just so you know," she says as he puts himself beneath a heating vent in the ceiling and rubs his hands like he's in front of a crackling fire.

"Don't mean much to me," he lies. He's not meant to be here for her in that sort of way. She's human, she'll move through her life in a blink and she'll die and rot and he'll just keep going on. That was how it went.

She crosses her arms, totally aware of just how much space he takes up.  _Her space_. "What kind of favor do you need?"

He rubs his hands some more and then prods his face. Winces. Sweeps his eyes in her direction. "A place to lay low for a day or three."

"A day or three?" She scoffs, rolling her eyes. "You heard what I said about my boyfriend right? He will... _not_  like that you're here."

"Then don't tell him." Sweeney shrugs and looks down at her pretty little face. She's annoyed, he can tell that much. She has no fucking idea that he's been looking after her like a goddamned fairy godmother her whole fucking life. He'd call her ungrateful, but she didn't  _know_  and it was own damn fault for falling for her spirit and her face. "Just a day then."

Laura wrestles with herself until she throws her arms up in the air. "Fine. You can sleep on the couch." She motions toward the L shaped couch, not bothering to wonder if he'd fit on it.

"Great," he grins. "Do you have anything to drink?"

Heaving a sigh, Laura makes her way to the kitchen and he follows. She slaps his hand away when he goes for the fridge. She opens it herself.

"You better pay if you drink all my beer," she says, handing him a bottle.

He puts it to his face for a minute before popping off the top. He lifts it to her in a small salute before drinking. He also makes his way back to her couch and sits down with a groan and stretches himself out.

She pours herself a glass of wine in the kitchen and stands between him and the TV. "You know, I didn't think you were real."

He peers up at her. "Your imagination ain't that great. You couldn't have imagined all of this Irish sexy."

She laughs. "Wow. You are a cocky son of a bitch, aren't you?"

"I've been called worse."

She wonders, for a brief moment if she should call Shadow, but decides against it. Like that night, four years ago, there's something about Sweeney that doesn't  _scare_  her. She believes him when she says he doesn't plan on killing her. That's a start, she guesses.

"Well," she lets out a breath and settles onto the part of the couch he isn't occupying at the moment. "Since you interrupted my day off, I'm just going to ignore the fact that you're here."

"Fine by me," he says.

She reaches for the remote and turns on the TV. She sits and drinks her overfilled wineglass and listens and watches as he gets up, uses her bathroom, gets another beer, tosses off his jacket and ends up on the couch again.

He doesn't talk to her, and falls asleep a few times, but wakes up pretty easily, slitting open an eye and peering over at her. She gets up after a while, pausing the TV and shuffling around her place. It's gotten dark outside. When she's within what he hopes in earshot, he speaks. "I was a king once."

He hears her laugh again. She doesn't take him seriously. "King of the fucking leprechaun fairies, right?" she muses. She peers over the back of the couch at him, her hair falling in front of her face.

He can smell her scent, fresh and new from her, not just the lingering fact that this was her house. "You know, you could do with a little faith."

Laura gives him an  _are-you-serious_  look and disappears momentarily. She returns with more wine and a change of clothes. Shorts, t-shirt, socks bunched up around her ankles. She sits back on the couch. "What do I have to have faith in? Have you taken a look around lately? This world is shit."

He sits himself up a little and nods. "Yeah. But that's when faith really counts."

She thinks about this. "Do you want me...what, believe that leprechauns are real?" She didn't. She thought he was some intense dream or something. But here he is again, real as ever. But something still stops her from believing. Even when he pulls gold from the air.

"For a start."

The TV remains paused. She crosses her legs and turns to face him, leaning against the couch. "What do you ever do for anyone, huh? I don't see people suddenly finding a big score at the end of a rainbow. That shit would be on the news."

"Ppppsssshhhh." He waves a hand, empties another bottle and places it with the rest on her coffee table. "Do you know what it's like to have your story rewritten so many times that you can't even remember your own fucking name?"

Laura avoids his eyes, dark and demanding, and sips her wine. "Can't say that I do. Is that a rhetorical question?"

"No. I used to be a king. I think. And this?" He plucks a coin out of the air, and another until he's got a handful. "This is the sun's treasure. But what the fuck does that mean?"

"I don't know," Laura says, seriously. This feels like another moment that's going to fade into a dream in a few months, but it feels very real and very dangerous now that she's living it.

"Neither do I." The coins drop the floor and he sits back.

He looks miserable and Laura drinks a good bit of her wine before she puts the glass down and moves to sit closer. "Look, I don't know if this is some kind of midlife crisis thing or what but," she hesitates but pats his knee in the least comforting way she could manage, "I'm sure things will be work out."

Sweeney looks down at her tiny white hand and up to her pretty round face. There's echoes of Essie there; one of the last, if not the very last, people to actually believe in him. A part of him, at least.

"You remind me of someone," he says as she pulls her hand back. He sits forward, brushes fingertips across the apple of her cheek.

She freezes. "Hopefully not the wife you murdered."

He squints. "I didn't murder my wife."

"Oh, phew." She feels less safe now, but she still doesn't kick him out.

"I had a wife." His brow furrows.

She pushes his hand away from her face. She wants to scoot back, but something stops her. She reaches around for her wine instead. Gulps some down.

"I was a king. And I was also...more." His frown deepens.

Laura swallows hard, hands shaking. "What's more than a king?" She doesn't know how or why this strange man is having an existential crisis in her living room, but she feels like she's on the edge of a precipice, about ready to fall.

His eyes focus back in on hers. "A god."

_A god_. He says it like it's the easiest thing in the world. But Laura doesn't believe in God or gods. She doesn't even believe in fucking karma. But he says it like it means something. "A god," she repeats, less convincingly.

This had to be some kind of dream. This can't really be happening to her.

She moves to stand up, but he grabs her wrist. Not hard, and it doesn't take much to convince her to stay. She shifts back into place on the sofa.

"Do you see this?" He pulls another coin from the air, but this one is larger than the others. "This is the coin that you give a king. It has power."

She reaches for it and he surprises both of them when he lets her take it into her hands. He shivers like she's touched his soul. There's a sun etched into one side of it. She rubs her finger over it. It definitely feels old, like he'd snagged it from a burial site.

"The sun's treasure," he says absentmindedly.

Laura tilts her head and turns the coin round and round between her fingertips. She notices, but doesn't mind when he sits forward more and puts his hand on her leg, palm on her knee, fingers stretched out. His touch his hot, like he's running a fever. It sends goosebumps right up her spine.

"You really think you were...are a god?" she asks finally. Not because she believes it, but he certainly does.

"Yes." He takes the coin and waits until she lets go to make it disappear, putting it somewhere safe. "I could have danced on the sun."

"Could you?" She's intrigued, if not a little freaked out. She thinks, like after the night at the bar, how Audrey will get a kick out of hearing this story when Laura told her later.

"Yes," he says again, rubbing his thumb on the inside of her thigh.

She blinks and downs more wine. She thinks about Shadow and how much she loves him and how he makes her happy. But she still doesn't move away. "Who do I remind you of?" She's in it now, playing into whatever delusion is going through this man's mind. If he wanted anything less, he should have gone elsewhere.

_Please don't say your wife,_  she thinks.

"The last person who believed in me," Sweeney says. He looks a little hapless, a little dangerous, a little bit broken.

_Damn_.

She finds herself in his lap, her hands hovering over his face, which appeared to have healed a little bit in the past few hours. She tries not to think too hard when she finally kisses him.

She believes that he believes and while it takes more than one person to tip the wheel and rebirth a god, it's enough for tonight.

Her skin is silky smooth and her clothes come off easily. She's light as a feather and her bed's big enough for them both.

They fall to sleep after. Laura sleeps deeper than she has in years. Sweeney wakes feeling rested, like he hadn't slept in centuries, and yet the spell of content is broken when he realizes where he is and who he's with.

He gets up and she slumbers on. He tugs on his clothes and leaves not a trace of himself behind, gathering his gold from under her couch, taking the bottles from the living room and tossing them in the bin outside on his way out.

He remembers too much, which means she won't. The world will balance itself out and he knows this, instinctively.

She won't remember a thing and he doesn't know if it's better or worse.

 

 

 

 

Laura McCabe gets married to Shadow Moon six months later. She refuses gold jewelry because it reminds her of something or someone she can't quite place.

Her wedding band is twisted and white gold. It'll do just fine.

 

 

 

 

Sweeney watches her. Just for a little while. Before long, it's too much and he decides that he's lost her and he vows to find a new purpose. So he drags his ass back to Grimnir and drinks his way across the country. It takes a few years for him to forget.

 

 

 

 

"Laura Moon," Grimnir says. "Kill her for me, will you? With a little flair, if you don't mind."

"What?" Sweeney stops eating the food on his plate. His eyes darken. "I ain't killing anyone for you. Not like that."

Grimnir continued eating and patted the corners of his lips. "Yes you will. You will kill her for me, and then meet me at this address," slides over a piece of paper, "and fight the man I'll be sitting with."

Sweeney blinks, leaving the paper on the table. "Why? What do you get out of all of this?"

"Oh, Sweeney, my boy." Grimnir shakes his head and slices into his bloody steak. "You don't need to know all the details. And besides, you should be thanking me. You'll be heading to familiar territory."

Sweeney blinks and opens the paper. Not only is there an address handwritten on the bottom, but there's a photograph, photocopied, onto it. He knows that face. The anguish on his own face is tangible and Grimnir chuckles.

"You fucking bastard," Sweeney says, crinkling the paper in his hands. "Did you plan this shit?"

The old man puts his hands up in surrender. "I did no such thing, Sweeney. Come on." He leans across the table and pats the Irishman on the upper arm. "Fate is a fickle bitch, you know that."

"You don't have to kill her." His voice is small and weak and he hates himself for it.

Grimnir shrugs. "I do. She's in my way. It's her husband I want."

The paper crumples completely in his hands and he breathes long and hard until he can speak without flipping his fucking lid. "I won't."

"You will. You have to."

He did. He knew it. But he was going to get fucked over in the process.

"She's fucking her best friend's husband," Grimnir continues, unperturbed. He waves his fork and knife around. "I'm sure you can do something poetic about that."

Sweeney sits there, still as a tree, until he lets out a "Fuck!" and slams his fist into the table. It and everything on it jumps but doesn't freak. He gets up, knocking over his chair and stalks out of the restaurant.

 

 

 

 

He does it anyway and he's pretty sure he's never hated himself more than when Laura gurgles out her last breath on the side of the road.

 

 

 

 

Sweeney welcomes the fight at Crocodile Jack's. He wishes there was more, but he gets himself beat to a fucking pulp and it's a little like penance.

He gives Shadow his prize fucking coin in hopes that it will bring himself a fast death, withering away to nothing without his lucky coin.

 

 

 

 

He doesn't imagine that it will bring her back to fucking life. It's good and it's bad at the same time.

 

 

 

 

He tries hating her, from the beginning. But he doesn't. He wears thin pretty fast. She doesn't remember a single thing about him so it's easy for her to hate him.

He takes it all.


End file.
